[HN Gopher] WWII code breaker Mary Ratcliffe has died
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WWII code breaker Mary Ratcliffe has died
 
Author : smcin
Score  : 76 points
Date   : 2023-12-15 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
 
web link (www.dailymail.co.uk)
w3m dump (www.dailymail.co.uk)
 
| smcin wrote:
| (There will be better obituaries for her, but for now the
| DailyMail was one of the first to publish)
 
  | LemmyInThePub wrote:
  | The Daily Mail certainly isn't a reputable news source.
  | 
  | In fact, Wikipedia has banned its use:
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail#Reliability
 
    | dang wrote:
    | On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality. This looks
    | like a good enough article. Lots of past explanation about
    | this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=fal
    | se&so...
 
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Surprisingly, no Wikipedia page for this notable figure.
 
  | smcin wrote:
  | I can't find out whether she was a cryptographer, but she was
  | at a higher level than the technicians.
  | 
  | https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/yoursay/3840026.letter-f...
 
  | MandieD wrote:
  | Pages for women scientists have often been deleted (or at least
  | nominated for deletion) for not being notable enough:
  | https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/female-scientists-pages-...
 
    | dudul wrote:
    | Was she a scientist? I didn't know her, and after reading
    | this, admittedly short, article it doesn't look like she was
    | doing much more than technician work.
 
    | smcin wrote:
    | The article didn't say she was a scientist. There were also
    | technicians. It's unclear.
    | 
    | I said there may be more detailed bios published. I was
    | unable to find much under her name.
 
  | ejb999 wrote:
  | Not surprising to me - is she actually notable? as far as I can
  | tell she is no more (or less) notable than any of the millions
  | of people that contributed to the war effort - so along the
  | lines of an army grunt following orders to shoot at the enemy,
  | or an assembly line worker in the USA putting together B27's.
  | 
  | She took coded messages, fed them into a device that someone
  | else invented, and then delivered the output for someone to
  | (possibly) act on. As far as I can tell she was a cog in the
  | huge war machine.
  | 
  | Do all of the millions of people, or 100's of thousands of
  | americans who gave their lives, get or deserve a wikipedia page
  | as well?
  | 
  | Nothing against this woman, or anyone that contributed to the
  | war effort, but millions upon millions of people did - and they
  | are all equally worthy of remembrance.
 
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| If you are ever nearby, I can strongly recommend visiting
| Bletchley Park. It is a pretty small museum now, but almost
| everything about it is fascinating and you can easily spend a
| full day there.
| 
| https://bletchleypark.org.uk/
 
  | komadori wrote:
  | I prefer The National Museum of Computing, which now occupies a
  | site just outside the Bletchley Park museum perimeter.
  | 
  | For example, the last time I visited Bletchley Park they were
  | exhibiting a mock-up of one side of a Bombe with a video screen
  | mounted on the other side playing something on a loop. By
  | comparison, TNMoC has a real working reconstruction of a Bombe
  | and we were able to watch a live code breaking demonstration.
  | 
  | https://www.tnmoc.org/
 
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(page generated 2023-12-15 23:00 UTC)